Authorities confirmed on Sunday that 16 people were killed in the fiery hot air balloon crash in central Texas on Saturday, but said it would take “a long process” to identify the victims of the worst such disaster in US history.

Texas hot-air balloon crash leaves 16 people dead

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NTSB investigators will scrutinize the company that operated the balloon and the pilot, neither of which have been publicly identified. The balloon was operated by Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides, according to two officials familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The operation does not appear to be registered with the state of Texas.

Though authorities had not publicly identified the pilot, Alan Lirette told the AP that it was Skip Nichols – his best friend, boss and roommate. Nichols, 49, identifies himself on his Facebook page as the chief pilot of Heart of Texas.

Lirette helped launch the balloon, which Nichols was piloting, he said, on Sunday morning from their shared house in Kyle, Texas. Lirette also said there were 15 people on board – none of them children – plus Nichols. Lirette would not answer specific questions about the balloon’s launch or crash into a pasture on Saturday morning near Lockhart, Texas.

“That’s the only thing I want to talk about, is that he’s a great pilot,” Lirette said of Nichols, who also owns Missouri-based Air Balloon Sports. “There’s going to be all kinds of reports out in the press and I want a positive image there, too.”

NTSB investigators will look at “three things – human, machine and environment” at the site, about 30 miles south of Austin, the board member Robert Sumwalt said Sunday in Washington. They will look at the aircraft’s maintenance history and weather at the time of the crash, which is one of the worst ever. In February 2013, a balloon flying over Luxor, Egypt, caught fire and plunged 1,000ft to the ground, crashing into a sugar cane field and killing at least 19 tourists.

Federal officials, unsure how many people were riding in the Texas balloon, will look into whether the operator filed a passenger manifest before taking off. Balloons do not usually file flight plans, Sumwalt said.

Lirette said several people on board seemed related, because “a lot of last names were the same”, but he didn’t provide specifics. Authorities have not released the names of those who were on board.

The NTSB is interested in any cellphone video of the balloon’s flight, and investigators will look for devices in the wreckage that have recoverable video shot by passengers, as well as any video from witnesses.

“When balloons go out on these flights, they have a … couple of cars to go pick up the riders after they’ve landed in a field somewhere. We think there may be some chase footage from those cars,” Sumwalt said.

The crash happened in farmland, and cutting through it is a row of massive high-capacity electrical transmission lines. The site of the crash appears to be right below the overhead lines and aerial photos showed an area of charred pasture underneath, but authorities did not immediately provide further details about what happened.

Margaret Wylie lives about a quarter-mile from the crash site. She was letting her dog out Saturday morning when she heard a “pop, pop, pop”.

“I looked around and it was like a fireball going up,” she said, noting that the fireball was under large power lines and almost high enough to reach the bottom of them.

Heart of Texas’s website said it offers rides in the San Antonio, Houston and Austin areas. The company’s Facebook page features photos of a hot air balloon with a smiley face with sunglasses on it up in the air, people waving from a large basket on the ground and group selfies taken while up in the air.

Calls to Heart of Texas operations manager Sarah Nichols, 72, rang unanswered, and a woman in Missouri believed to be his sister did not return calls seeking comment.

Warning about potential high-fatality accidents, safety investigators recommended two years ago that the Federal Aviation Administration impose greater oversight on commercial hot air balloon operators, government documents show. The FAA rejected those recommendations, and the NTSB classified the FAA’s response to the two balloon safety recommendations as “open-unacceptable”, which means the safety board was not satisfied with the FAA’s response.

The FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said it was difficult to say whether the Texas crash would cause the agency to reconsider NTSB’s recommendations, “until we’ve had a chance to gather and examine the evidence in this particular case”.